Handyman Leiston

Leiston's character was shaped by ironwork. From 1778 the Garrett family ran an engineering works in the town, growing it from a small forge into one of the most important agricultural-machinery manufacturers in nineteenth-century Britain. Garrett's Long Shop, built in 1853, is one of the earliest examples of a flow-line factory in the world and now houses a superb working museum. Steam traction engines, threshing machines and even military vehicles all rolled out of Leiston and were exported around the empire. The Garrett works finally closed in 1980, but its legacy is everywhere in the town's grid of red-brick terraces.

Older still is Leiston Abbey, a Premonstratensian foundation moved here in the fourteenth century from a marshy site at Minsmere. Substantial ruins survive in farmland on the edge of town, with concerts held there in summer. A few miles east, the Sizewell beach is dominated by the Sizewell A and B nuclear power stations, with C now under construction; love them or loathe them, they are a defining presence in modern Leiston life. Beyond the beach is the RSPB's Minsmere reserve, one of the great birding sites in Britain. The town itself is friendly and down-to-earth, with practical Victorian terraces, more recent estates and a steady demand for the sort of trades work I do — extensions, kitchens, fences, doors and decorating.